


(Costing not less than everything)

by aliceblue



Category: For Your Entertainment (Album), Hotel California - The Eagles (Song)
Genre: Crossover, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-12-20
Updated: 2010-12-20
Packaged: 2017-10-13 21:08:54
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,586
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/141740
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/aliceblue/pseuds/aliceblue
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A couple of hours later, he spies a glow in the distance.</p>
            </blockquote>





	(Costing not less than everything)

**Author's Note:**

  * For [mjules](https://archiveofourown.org/users/mjules/gifts).



When his cell phone rings for the seventh time in two hours, John finally gives into temptation and rolls down his window and throws the phone out of it. He tells himself that he’s proud of himself for not getting out of the car, placing the phone in the road and running over it. The smart thing to do would have just been to just turn it off, maybe even go as far as take the battery out, but it’s been one of those days when he needed to do something more final and absolute to feel any bit of satisfaction.

After all, he’s already stormed out of his apartment and driven in a random direction (with random turns every half hour at the very least) to get away from Casey and the misery from their latest fight. Tossing his phone is minor compared to his actions so far.

Two hours and seven more random turns later John regrets the loss of the phone, especially since he’s just remembered that the GPS thing his father recently sent him is still sitting in a box in his apartment. Since he already had his phone, he hadn’t ever gotten around to walking it down to his car.

As night approached, John was starting to feel a bit desperate and more than a bit silly. He’s pretty sure that everyone he knows has been alerted about his ‘disappearance’ by now, he just has to hope that no one’s tried going to the police or the news. (Don't they have to wait at least a day for that?) He’s decided that his number one priority has to be finding a phone, any phone, just to let people know that he’s still alive.

Unfortunately, other than the road he’s driving down, there doesn’t seem to be any signs of human civilization. If he hadn’t stopped for a sandwich and gas on a whim in that last town he would have already been stranded on the side of the road.

A couple of hours later, he spies a glow in the distance and dares to hope that he’s managed to find a town, even one of those tiny ones that aren’t big enough to include on a map.

He’s not that lucky. It’s just a single building, set back a fair distance from the road. There are no cars out front, and if it weren’t for the Vacancy sign he would have never guessed it was a hotel since other than the lights it looks deserted. John’s just happy that the lights were bright enough to catch his attention--it would have be far too easy to drive pass the place. He probably would have during the daytime.

It’s almost like a mirage, but at least he’s lucky enough that it’s real and doesn’t vanish when he parks his car and walks toward it.

At first he thinks the place really is abandoned, but then he spots the girl calmly waiting behind a desk. She grins when she realizes that he’s seen her, and for the first time all day, John feels like he can relax.

She doesn’t mention rates or ask for his name or hand him any forms. She just grabs a key and points him down a hallway, towards a room. She mention the mealtimes, telling him that he can sleep in if he wants to, there’s always something set aside for the guests. The last thing he hears walking down the long hallway is the girl calling out a cheery welcome to the hotel.

John falls asleep that night trying to figure out if the hotel is named California or if he ended in California-the-state without noticing. He’s so relieved the next day when he realizes that he slept without echos of the fight disturbing him that he never bothers to ask where exactly he is.

Life is easy in the hotel. He feels a bit like he’s sleepwalking through life, but maybe that’s what he needs right now. He doesn’t know if he’s healing or still running. All he knows is that it doesn’t hurt quite as bad and that sometimes he forgets his troubles altogether.

The food is amazing, the other guests are interesting. He spends a couple of days wondering if he accidentally wondered onto a commune, but no one suggests any chores (and none of the other guests seem to be working) so he abandons that idea quickly.

There’s something odd about the hotel though, as if it were the type of place that his parents or even grandparents would find scandalous. There are people like the older lady who seems to have a small harem of lovers that she always dances around with, happily leading a new one each day to the small atrium. He’s not quite sure where she’s finding them all, but sometimes there’s more than one with her, and John even occasionally recognizes a repeat, so he’s able to reassure himself that she’s not a weird serial killer or anything like that.

Recognizing one of her boys is what finally makes John notice how long he’s been there, that it’s been at least a week, perhaps even two. He doesn’t want to think of the bill he’s had to have run up, and he feels a bit sick to the stomach thinking of the consequences from running away from his life. He never managed to call, so his friends have surely contacted the police by now. His mother probably thinks he’s dead.

He finds the hostess behind her desk again, but this time shes not smiling. She looks anxious and concerned when he asks about their checkout policy. She still doesn’t produce any paperwork, instead questioning if he’s really ready to leave.

She gives him a speech about how he’s free to leave, (really, at any time!) but if he does choose to leave, he’ll never be able to come back, even though he’ll waste away looking for the place.

She’s innocently yet creepily enthusiastic as she exclaims that maybe he’ll be one of the lucky ones who can walk away and never look back, who can think of the place like a fondly half-remembered dream.

She tells him that the Hotel’s always going to be a part of him now, and that he’ll always be a part of it. She tells him how much easier life is within its walls, how wonderful it is to escape life’s troubles and have a place to breathe and live and thrive.

John’s starting to worry that he accidentally stumbled into a cult so he tells her that he doesn’t think he can live here, that he doesn’t feel awake or even alive.

She looks startled, and then slowly smiles, looking like she’s realized a solution for her concerns about him.

She gives him a choice. He can stay as he is now, he can leave, or he can go further in to top floor.

(No one bothered to mention the ‘club’ before, but now all the half-awake people wandering back to their rooms at all times suddenly makes a bit more since.)

Apparently years before a new guest had arrived, spent two days exploring and then declared the place boring and drab. Instead of leaving, he had taken over the top floor, transforming it into his own paradise. He’s styled himself as a host inviting people into his club, his sanctuary, his never-ending party.

It’s like stepping into another world. John can’t believe he’s still in the same building, it’s like stepping into a fever dream.

He recognizes some of the other hotel guests and realizes this is where the harem-boys go when they aren’t attending their lady. There are other people he’s never seen before, and he’ll later learn that there are still guest rooms on this floor and that some people never leave it.

He spends an hour or three there, enjoying the heat, the controlled madness of the constant party. He cautiously observes, spending more time on the edges of the crowd, just trying to get a feel for the place.

He eventually walks away, but heads towards his room instead of the front door. It takes a long time to fall asleep, and he finally drifts away with the thought that the people upstairs didn’t just look happy--they looked satisfied.

He hasn’t felt like that for along time--since weeks before the fight with Casey at least.

He slips back into the party the next evening, and this time the ‘host’ spots him and pulls him deep into the crowd, whispering “trust me” in his ear.

He does. That night it seems like everything that happens there is just for him, like he’s the center of it all. He feels awake. Alive.

He comes back the next night, and the night again, always wondering if the feeling will slip away, but it doesn’t, not even on the nights when the host is focused on someone else.

Then there’s a morning where he doesn’t go back to his room downstairs and falls asleep in the host’s bed instead. John learns the host’s name the next morning, and realizes that it’s the first name he’s learned since he arrived in the hotel.

He realizes he can’t remember how long he’s been there.

He realizes that it doesn’t matter.

It’s too much a part of him to ever walk away from it, to ever step foot in the outside world again.

This is his world now. It’s all he needs.

**Author's Note:**

> Title is a quote from T. S. Eliot's Four Quartets.
> 
> And the crossover was inspired just as much by the video as it was the album as a whole.


End file.
